modelling tools

suds · Post by **suds** » Sun May 14, 2006 10:47 am

no not you, but you are a tool

sorry, this has started badly...ill start over

hi my name is suds,

i want to use a modeling program like maya or 3d max to make some maps and stuff.

has anyone heard of or used anything that can convert .map or other quake compatible files to/from a common 3d file type like .3ds .max .mb .obj

anyone? even just a clue would help

ps. give den money

NRGizeR · Post by **NRGizeR** » Mon May 15, 2006 12:25 pm

suds wrote:has anyone heard of or used anything that can convert .map or other quake compatible files to/from a common 3d file type like .3ds .max .mb .obj

Don't you mean the other way around? .3ds -> .map? Then again, I can't remember seeing either of those... so I guess it doesn't matter really

I have some vague memory of seeing a (q3?) .bsp -> .3ds converter... but I'm not 100% sure about that...

-NRG

suds · Post by **suds** » Tue May 16, 2006 9:08 am

yeah doesnt look good, i found a few tools for conversions to a q3 format but i cant be arsed converting again to .map

pain

kamikraez · Post by **kamikraez** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 8:53 am

sup suds?

cant do it, or do it easily anyway. new games use modelling programs, but q2 is way too oldschool. the way the maps are made just make things freaking difficult

ive tried converting between q2 and hl and even that went horribly

W1lco · Post by **W1lco** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 2:03 pm

I know Pancalonga used sum kind of plugin for 3dmax, there he could import the md2 files... ask him, he should know best i think

NRGizeR · Post by **NRGizeR** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 2:52 pm

W1lco wrote:I know Pancalonga used sum kind of plugin for 3dmax, there he could import the md2 files... ask him, he should know best i think

.md2 is not .map or .bsp.. he wants to import/export maps not models

suds · Post by **suds** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 8:54 am

hey guys,

if someone wrote a plugin it would do amazing things for the oldschool mapping quality

i think that the .map format is hard to convert to.

some old programs like qoole made a real mess of the coordinates and moved things around and stuff..pier is an example of its crapness.

BUT i believe you can map using notepad...and if thats possible then perhaps its not so hard after all...

no programming skills in my box of tricks tho...so no progress with that idea.

PanConLonga · Post by **PanConLonga** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 9:10 am

I tried to find some plug in to import bsp to 3dmax but didn`t have any luck..... There are only plugins to import .md2 files......

NRGizeR · Post by **NRGizeR** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 9:07 am

suds wrote:BUT i believe you can map using notepad...and if thats possible then perhaps its not so hard after all...

Yeah, the .map format is plain text and should actually be really simple to convert to. The challenge would be converting verticies to brushes (that are used in .map files). Still... imo the q2 way of rendering maps just wouldn't fit a modelling prog anyway... and there are several excellent mapping progs out there...

Oh, and not all new games use 3dsmax or similar progs for their mapmaking. Doom3 for example still uses gtkradiant.. (same prog as I'm using for q2)...

suds · Post by **suds** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 9:22 am

only problem i have with the q2 edit programs is verticies editing...

im trying to make a nice tree right now in GTK, its friggin annoying...all i need is a snap to vertex function and my life will fall into place around this one problem

UNLESS someone has a nice tree i can have. or a map i can steal a nice tree from (with full credit given of course)...dont say tj...

NRGizeR · Post by **NRGizeR** » Thu Jun 29, 2006 2:07 am

suds wrote:only problem i have with the q2 edit programs is verticies editing...

im trying to make a nice tree right now in GTK, its friggin annoying...all i need is a snap to vertex function and my life will fall into place around this one problem

What you really need to start using in radiant to make cool looking stuff is the clipper. It's such a great tool. Vertex editing doesn't work too well because of the way the .map format works (combined with snap-to-grid) because moving verticies often cause split and/or inverted planes, but if you use the clipper you can make 3d clipping planes to cut of parts of a brush. It's really useful for other stuff as well, and it's probably the tool I use the most in radiant.

Edge editing also work pretty good, but you should only do this on brushes that don't have any sloping faces, or you might create the same problems as with vertex editing. It's really about learning what you can do in what order. For example, to make a sloping triangle, you would first have a top view, moving the edges to where you want it, then from the side, move one of the verticies to where you want it (straight up, not moving it sideways since that might create problems), and voila. The other way to go is to just create a triangle that is the "max height" and then use the clipper to clip the triangle into being sloping.

(Don't worry, you'll get there.

)

Btw, if you want to read a good radiant tutorial, I managed to rescue the ricebug tutorials for qeradiant 147 before they were taken offline. They are online here: http://www.abo.fi/~cbjorkel/aq2/ricebug_tuts.zip. Although they are for qeradiant, things still work pretty much the same in gtkradiant.

Janner · Post by **Janner** » Thu Jun 29, 2006 5:25 am

Since this thread is called "modelling tools" I have a question regarding player/weapon models: Is there any good (and free) modelling program out there? I found out QuArK is capable of viewing player models, but you can't edit (atleast I didn't find out how) or save them.

EDIT: What I meant is a stand-alone program. No plug-in.

suds · Post by **suds** » Thu Jun 29, 2006 3:02 pm

cool ill take a look at that nrgizer

and janner, yes there are free progs about but ill let someone else answer that

Janner · Post by **Janner** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 2:24 am

I found a model editor, don't say it's good tho: MilkScape 3D. I found this after trying 7 other ones, which could only view them, or not save anything.

kamikraez · Post by **kamikraez** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:51 am

suds - i do some basic vertex maniulation in quark - first of all i have a tetrahedron - basic 4 sided triangular pyramid i made and stored in the toolbar for quick use - just drag and drp it into the map

then all i need to do is move the vertexes around. if i add more in it is possible to "tag" a vertex and then right click on vertextes on other brushes and have them snap to it. unfortunately they dont all move if you just move the one vertex after that - but i THINK the quark guys are working on this!

this is really handy for a curvy sand dune i was trying to make (whoops i gotta get back to that) where i was joining 6 vertices at the one point.

the reason i use a 4 sided poly is to avoid problems - any more faces (like a 5 sided pyramid) and quark starts to get picky about the way you can move vertices. it gets tricky to visualise what is happening though - a lot of times for larger solids (like cubes) if you dont want to count on qbsp3 ignoring internal faces you need to give them the sky flag

modelling tools

modelling tools

Re: modelling tools